Two years ago, Netflix made a video based on my Back to the Future Trilogy chiasmus article and called it the Lockard Theory. I was honored, of course, that they took note of my analysis. I loved helping others to see what a richer storytelling experience those films become once they notice all the intricacies of how the plot unfolds. But I wasn’t the genius who actually wrote the scripts for those films. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale did that.

The screenwriters who manage to create a chiasmus in film deserve all the credit; I’m simply the first to point out their achievements. As it turns out, the organizers of the London Screenwriters’ Festival 2018 agree with me. Ed Neumeier, the cowriter of RoboCop (1987), is going to speak at that event, and the Festival Producer recently asked me if he could reprint my RoboCop chiasmus article to showcase Neumeier’s achievements. I gladly granted his request. That was the first cinematic chiasmus I discovered, and it quickly became my most popular article. Neumeier wrote a brilliant screenplay with Michael Miner, and I love that I got to say something new about it that no one had ever noticed before. Here’s a link to the reprinted article on the festival’s website.

Miner actually commented on my article back in 2014 when it was published. So both of them now definitely know that they achieved something even more remarkable with that film than they realized at the time they were working on it. This is like the opposite of Murphy’s Law. If something good can happen, it will.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

Watch RoboCop: